I have now received three letters from you--one by the hands of M.
Cornelius, which you gave him, I think, at Three Taverns; a second which
your host at Canusium delivered to me; a third dated, according to you,
from on board your pinnace, when the cable was already slipped.[75] They
were all three, to use a phrase from the schools of rhetoric flavoured
with the salt of learning, and illumined with the marks of affection. In
these letters, indeed, I am urgently pressed by you to send answers, but
what renders me rather dilatory in this respect is the difficulty of
finding a trustworthy carrier. How few of these gentry are able to
convey a letter rather weightier than usual without lightening it by
skimming its contents! Besides, I do not always care to send[76]
whenever anyone is starting for Epirus: for I suppose that, having
offered victims before your Amaltheia,[77] you at once started for the
siege of Sicyon. And yet I am not even certain when you start to visit
Antonius or how much time you are devoting to Epirus. Accordingly, I
don't venture to trust either Achaeans or Epirotes with a letter somewhat
more outspoken than usual. Now some events _have_ occurred since you
left me worth my writing to you, but they must not be trusted to the
risk of a letter being lost, opened, or intercepted.

Well, then, to begin with: I was not called upon to speak first, and the
pacifier of the Allobroges[78] was preferred to me, and though this met
with some murmurs of disapprobation from the senate, I was not sorry it
was done. For I am thereby freed from any obligation to shew respect to
an ill-conditioned man, and am at liberty to support my position in the
Republic in spite of him. Besides, the second place has a dignity almost
equal to that of _princeps senatus_, and does not put one under too much
of an obligation to the consul. The third called on was Catulus; the
fourth, if you want to go still farther, Hortensius. The consul
himself[79] is a man of a small and ill-regulated mind, a mere buffoon
of that splenetic kind which raises a laugh even in the absence of wit:
it is his face rather than his facetiousness[80] that causes merriment:
he takes practically no part in public business, and is quite alienated
from the Optimates. You need expect no service to the state from him,
for he has not the will to do any, nor fear any damage, for he hasn't
the courage to inflict it. His colleague, however, treats me with great
distinc